Gospel Eyewitnesses

[Korah]

I'm posting this thread in Unorthodox Theology only because it employs Higher Criticism that many Christians reject. However, I come to the very orthodox conclusion that the gospels were mostly written by eyewitnesses. I'll present my first (of eight) in this post, leave time for any discussion, then proceed to the others one post at a time.
The standard Christian apologia for the gospels states that they were written by eyewitnesses or (in the cases of Mark and Luke) were written to give someone else’s eyewitness testimony. This works well for Mark, which is usually understood as Peter’s personal testimony, but the others are typically regarded as composite works. For the Gospel of John, the more it is presented as a unitary work by Christians, the less critics regard it as an eyewitness record. When examined more carefully, however, most of the gospel material can be established as from eyewitnesses.
The starting point for a new look might be Richard Bauckham in his 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and his 2007 The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple. He rejects the Form Criticism of early 20th Century and endeavors to show that all the gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. He’s not saying that any gospel is itself the work of an eyewitness, but that eyewitnesses stand behind each gospel. The most obvious example is Peter as the basis for Mark. The Gospel of John is more complicated. By dropping John as the author and eyewitness behind that gospel, he goes on to show that there are several eyewitnesses consulted by the man who did write John. The same would be more obviously true of the Gospel of Luke. He says he consulted eyewitnesses or eyewitness testimony. As for John, Bauckham explains the gradual emergence of the Beloved Disciple as the author’s way of introducing himself, a non-apostle, who only from John 13 presents himself as the eyewitness who needs no other validation. The Beloved Disciple is the author of John, but we don’t necessarily know who he is.
Bauckham seemed to stop in no-man’s-land. For Evangelicals, and even more for conservative Roman Catholics, establishing any eyewitness(es) behind John is not good enough if it is not John the Apostle. That he did not name the eyewitness(es) for sure is not satisfying to Christians not even so conservative. Trying to establish eyewitnesses and even suggesting their names is anathema to scholars of a more liberal bent. If my opinion matters, it’s not enough to go against the grain of scholarship and suggest eyewitnesses, but without closing the deal and presenting evidence for specific eyewitnesses and which parts each wrote. But to do that Bauckham would have had to cross his Evangelical base by acknowledging sources within the gospels, and he was not prepared to do that.
For most of two centuries now, scholarship has shown more and more willingness to break up the gospels into constituent parts. For some scholars this was a way to salvage evidentiary and historical grounds for knowing Jesus. This was particularly true of the concept of Marcan Priority or in establishing a large Ur-Marcus source within it. Likewise many scholars in “demarcating” a Q Source (redundant, yes?) in Matthew and Luke suggested that the Logia said to be from Matthew should be understood to be Q. The Two-Source Theory provides for this. However, less and less attention is being paid to eyewitnesses standing behind even these. There is also the Four-Source Theory, but no one seems to have suggested one basic eyewitness to be behind L for Luke or M for Matthew. However, there is a good case (which I will show) for identifying a Simon as the L Source, a man who was a disciple of John the Baptist and one of Jesus’s Seventy-Two.
As for the Gospel of John, critics have readily singled out the Signs, the Passion Narrative, and (by some) the Discourses as due to sources. I will show that each of these has an eyewitness author and the main Editor was himself an eyewitness. My case is that the upshot of two centuries of Higher Criticism properly is to identify seven eyewitnesses to the four gospels.
Tracing sources of the gospels would seem to start with the earliest written documents, but the logic starts better with the foundation upon which the other sources and additions were built. This source is the Passion Narrative, the largest part of the material common to both John and the Synoptics. The source for the information in it is most likely John Mark, who was the most likely “disciple known to the high priest”. (See John 18:15-16, 20:2-9, in which in John 20:2 the English word “love” is phileo in the Greek, not “agape” as in John 13. In John 18-19 we get events and direct quotes that Peter would not have witnessed.)
John 18 launches right out with Jesus going to the Garden. Whereas Teeple believed the information here came from the Synoptics and was later enlarged upon, he more correctly called it a source. No one regards these chapters as from the Signs Source. This foundation source from John Mark is the following:
[My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.]
John 18:1b, 1d,ii. 3,vi. 10b,v. 12,iv. 13b,i. 15-19,xiii. 22,ii 25b,ii. 27-31,vii. 33-35,vii. (36-40);x. 19:1-19,xl. 21-23,viii. 28-30,vii. 38b,iii. 40-42;vi. 20:1,iv. 3-5,viii. 8,ii. 11b-14a,iv. 19b,ii. 22-23,v. 26-27,viii. 30,ii. John Mark gives the story of this one week in his life, best called the Passion Diary.
Some of the later passages in John 20 are as likely to have been added as P-Strand, but as discussed later this may have come from the same author.
A great many scholars have believed that a Passion Narrative was the first element of the gospels to be written. It seems similarly often believed that John Mark was very young at this time and lived near Jerusalem, so his personal testimony would not tend to include narrative preceding John 18. He is the first of seven identifiable eyewitnesses in the gospels.

 

[Korah]

Continuing with the second eyewitness to write about Jesus:
I used to think that earlier parts of John were equally carried to the Synoptics from what I believed Peter had told. Now that I think of John Mark as the writer of the Passion Narrative, I have had to find some other explanation for the earlier Synoptic-type passages. The clearest of these is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It’s regarded by many source-critics as from the Signs Source.
Yet little else is thought to come from Signs into the Synoptics, and I used to think that nothing at all did. What seems to have happened was that John Mark’s Passion Narrative later had Signs added in front of it. That’s why the Signs Source ends at John 12, because the story beyond that point had already been written. At this time the entirety of John Mark’s text plus some Signs were used as the base to which Peter added his recollections to form Petrine Ur-Marcus. (Perhaps the Signs were incomplete at this time.) In the process whatever was in Aramaic was translated into Greek. But this was used henceforth only in the Synoptic gospels, not in John. Meanwhile (or perhaps beforehand) the Passion Narrative text in Aramaic (or a copy of it) was used for translation into Greek. Next in front of the Passion Narrative in Greek the complete Signs Source was translated into Greek by the person who (later or) had earlier translated Petrine Ur-Marcus. The latter at this point was a Signs gospel, consisting of the Signs plus the Passion Narrative, neither of which had any input from Peter. Both these portions had similar style (but not exact) either because the Signs translator made some stylistic changes in the Passion Narrative or because the two translators had similar Greek style.
The Signs Source according to W. Nicol is John 1:35-51;xx. 2:1-11;xx. 4:1-9,x. 16-19,v. 27-30,x. 40,ii. 43-54;x. 5:1-9;x. 6:16-25;xv. 9:1-2,iv. 6-7;vii. 11:1-6,vii. 11-17,vii. 33-44;xv. 12:1-8,xii. 12-15.v. [The Roman numerals indicate the number of times I see eyewitness touches in that set of verses.] I would agree with Howard M. Teeple in The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John in ascribing some individual verses within the above to the later Editor and in adding to the Signs Source John 6:1-15,xx. Teeple recognizes as his source “S” basically what I attribute above to the Signs Source in John 1 to 12 and the Passion Narrative in John 18 and 19. What I show above in the Passion Narrative in John 20 Teeple never labeled as “S”, but he did denote it as a special source “p-1” or even “p-2”. However, he shows as “S” a number of sections not accounted for above, most of which I will show later to be P-Strand.
Not necessarily disclosing the author, but largely related to this section of John is the name “Andrew” at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2). The name “Philip” occurs even more frequently in about the same places and in John 14:8, 9, but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon (usually dated to 170 AD) states that Andrew started out the process of writing John. As a further note I would add that the first occurrence of each name at John 12:22 is shown by Teeple as from the source, so should not be used to claim that the name “Andrew” is not associated exclusively with the Signs Source, even though it falls outside the sections more conclusively identified as Signs Source. Andrew is the second identifiable eyewitness.

 

[Korah]

And here is yet a third eyewitness who wrote about Jesus in the Gospel of John.
The above sources in the Gospel of John I rate as eyewitness testimony in that they were set in writing by the eyewitnesses John Mark and Andrew and are still found in the canonical John text in relatively pure form. This is particularly true of the Signs Source, as almost all scholars supporting this theory regard the initial literary style as preserved so well that a core of it is distinct. We can regard the selection stated above (two paragraphs up) as from the eyewitness Andrew. Beyond that core various scholars lump in other sections because of similar, but not so clearly distinct style. But by far the larger part of this additional material is Passion Narrative, and as delineated above (2nd paragraph in Post #157) can be regarded as the work of the eyewitness John Mark. There is additional material of similar style that some scholars add to their Signs Gospel, and these may be mixed passages stemming from Andrew or John Mark, but which are not so clearly eyewitness material. Some of this I will relegate to the P-Strand, largely editorial additions. Meanwhile the largest eyewitness source needs to be examined.
So before dealing with the P-Strand, another major source needs to be brought into consideration. Teeple follows Bultmann in seeing the main theological texts in John to be from a source. Many scholars see a Gnostic or semi-Gnostic strain in John, so Teeple labels this source "G". But just as Bultmann's delineation has been called into question, Teeple' source separation here was criticized from the first. Robert Kysar did not see that G and Teeple's later "E" Editor as distinct. I take a middle position, that the E material does contain much that is from an Editor, but much of it is best merged with G. I see the dividing line as between whatever can be regarded as Discourse, basically G plus the other teachings, and narrative that is contained wholly within E.
With that "clarified", I next see some of the G text above found in S stories, particularly in John 4, 5, and 9. There are sayings in John 4 that are in S style. I interpret these facts as meaning that the Signs writer who brought in the Passion Narrative also had available to him the Discourses, did his own translation at the start, and thereafter made use of the translation from Aramaic to Greek that was later used for the rest of John. It’s also possible that the Signs in John 5 and John 9 were added in a later edition.
Focusing now on the Discourses, where did they come from? The Discourses contain the Johannine Theology that has typically been considered as written down by John (or someone later) in his old age. As shown above, this is not necessarily the case. If we look for clues within the text itself, we find (apart from the Prologue) that high theology begins in John 3, the night visit to Nicodemus. Did Nicodemus record this? Consider that we next hear of Nicodemus in John 7:50-52, in which Nicodemus argues that the Law does not condemn a man without first hearing from him. If he took it upon himself to do what he said, the words recorded in the next three chapters from Jesus seem well suited to be a record of what Jesus said that might be worthy of condemnation. Later chapters reveal more and more favor towards what Jesus had to say, concluding with John 17. In John 19:39 Nicodemus brought spices for Jesus's burial. He had obviously become a Christian. The marked change in attitude toward Jesus shows that Nicodemus wrote all this (or at least notes) while Jesus was still alive.
Teeple displays the Nicodemus name consistently as what he labels "E" for Editor, which argues for the lumping together of his G and E strands, as I hold that G stems exclusively from Nicodemus. It does tend to argue that the Discourses were added in to John when the Editor was active, which I acknowledge as a possibility even though it goes against my belief that the Discourses were added in during the just-previous edition. On the other hand, recognizing at least some stylistic difference between G and E goes as well with my view that E added in G to the mix, but that in the process of doing so his own style got into it enough that Teeple could reasonably find that some parts of the Discourses should be categorized as E.
Even with the mentions of Nicodemus occurring in E sections, it's still reasonable to assume that the prior edition added his writings in, but without naming him. E got more specific, and is characteristic of him, he encased it within some narration. That the Discourses only relatively later get around to mentioning actions of Nicodemus does show that the Discourses were not the building block around which John was built, even though my logic dictates that it was the first text (or notes) written.
The raw text from Nicodemus, my modification of Teeple's G, runs as follows:
3 (in the main); 4:20-24; most of 5:17-47; 6:26-51, 58-65; most of 7:5-52; 8:12-57; most of 9 & 10, but not 9:1-2, 6-7, 13-17, 24-28; 11:1, 9-10, 16; 12:23-59; 13:16-17, 21-22; Ch. 14-17.
(As I expected, counting eyewitness evidences does not work for long discourse passages.)
As the above is almost all sayings, sermons, or debates, eyewitness status is less applicable. Indeed, Nicodemus was charged with bringing a case against Jesus, so the general tone of this source should not be regarded as representative of Jesus. Nevertheless, Nicodemus probably did restrict himself to noting down things that Jesus really said; he just omitted all the qualifications and nuances. Nicodemus is the third identifiable eyewitness.

 

[Korah]

Here's the fourth eyewitness. (You're allowed to comment on any of these as we go along, in case you're wondering. Or wait for all seven to be presented.)
Continuing my focus on eyewitness testimony I will consider later the editions of John that brought the sources together and turn to where we left off in tracing the two narrative sources in John that got worked in to the Synoptics. I have already explained in that long second paragraph in Post #2 ("Yet little else...") how the Passion Narrative in John got expanded into the Ur-Marcus found still in many of the passages where Mark overlaps Luke. Aware that the early state of John had placed Signs Source in front of the Passion Narrative and incorporated Nicodemus's Discourses, all set primarily in Jerusalem, next John Mark sought to write a gospel set primarily in Galilee and adding events in the middle of Jesus's ministry instead of just the earliest and latest. To do this he got biographical information from Peter and used Matthew's Q. The date of 44 AD for this seems early, and sets the 1st edition of John as even earlier. In that process the eyewitness testimony of Peter came in. Up to this point we already have four eyewitnesses, John Mark, Andrew, Nicodemus, and Peter. The verses attributable to Peter(including verses in Mark 14 and 15 already written by John Mark) are these [ur-Marcus]:
1:21-28,x. 2:18-3:5,xv. 5:1-43,lx. 8:27-9:13,xlv. 9:30-31,v. 9:38-42,v. 10:13-34,x. 10:46-52, v. 11:27-33,vi. 12:18-23,iii. 12:35-13:17,xv. 13:26-31,v. ,14:1-8, 28-42,xx. 14:48-54,v. 62-72;xv. 15:16-24, x., 33-42,xii. and continuing in Luke 24:1-3,iv.,11-12,v; and Acts 1:6-4:31, 5:17-42, 9:32-11:18, 12:1-17. (The Roman numerals represent the number of times I found details in that passage that could indicate eyewitness testimony.)
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
In Addition I suggest that the rest of the verses in Acts 1:6-12:25 and perhaps up to 15:35 be considered additional testimony by John Mark. As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D.
Note that these are the verses specified in my article, "Underlying Sources of the Gospels", less the verses therein from John Mark or Andrew as seen initially above. However, I have added in Mark 14:62-72 as from Peter (or John Mark) even though in my article I followed my stylistic rules and listed it as from Q. (I'll make an exception now by pleading that the word-use in Mark and Luke is dissimilar only because John Mark and Peter were both involved here, but as eyewitnesses from slightly different vantage points.)
Note [by studying the verses above] that what I call Petrine Ur-Marcus excludes not only that Marcan material not found in Luke, but also anything that I say derives from Q1 [shown in Post #5 also called here the"Twelve Source"]. It is distinguished from the latter by its style in which frequent consecutive words are exact in both Mark and Luke. This came about because Luke got this part of the shared material already in Greek. (Peter is the fourth identifiable eyewitness.)
Edited to add: For additional support here are the first six short paragraphs in the first of my four articles at that same website as above:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common

The four Gospels and Acts can be shown by simple common sense to be very early in date. Putting aside a priori theology that Christ is God on the one hand, or on the other hand historical method that proceeds as if supernatural events cannot happen, let's see what the texts themselves show.

The proper starting point is the Gospel of Luke and its continuation, The Acts of the Apostles. In the second half of the latter, the author at times slips into "we" (or "us" or "our") sayings that indicate he was with Paul of Tarsus during the latter's missionary journeys. These three passages are Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18, and 27:1-28:16. At the conclusion of these, Paul is still alive and in Rome, which can be dated by reference to Paul'7;s epistles in the New Testament to be about 64 A.D. The most sensible date for the Gospel of Luke and its complementary Acts is thus 64 A.D. The author (presumably Luke) could have written this much later in his life, but it would by common sense analysis still be early.

The Lucan author employed sources, as he himself tells us in Luke 1:1-4. These would necessarily have been earlier. At least one source bears some connection to the apostle Peter, whose name appears frequently in the Gospels and in the first fifteen chapters of Acts. The mention in Acts 15:7-11 occurs in the context of Acts chapters 13 to 28 that focus on Paul, so the source connected with Peter seems to end at Acts 12:19. The death of King Herod Agrippa I (12:23) sets the date at 44 A.D. This likely sets the date of the writing of the source and also establishes the likely author, as this is when Peter "went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark." Church tradition also supports this logic, that Peter's scribe was Mark, and critical scholarship calls this source "Ur-Marcus". It would have been as well titled "Ur-Lucas" to acknowledge that it underlies not just the Gospel of Mark, not just the Gospel of Luke, but also the Acts also written by the writer of Luke.

The earliest version of this Ur-Marcus was evidently written in Aramaic and included at least the Passion Narrative and the Feeding of the 5,000, as these are recounted in all four of the canonical Gospels. The composition of the Fourth Gospel, John, seems best regarded as having been rotated in composition among a team of the apostles, making an early date sensible for it as well.

Peter (after Jesus, of course) is the focus of the Ur-Marcus Aramaic draft, but his name is primary in many other passages of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as well. Verbal identities in the Greek among these passages between the Gospels of Mark and Luke establish that this second (?) draft should be called Greek Ur-Marcus. This stage of the collaboration between the men Peter and Mark would thus be most likely not long after 44 A.D.

Furthermore, these identities in Greek between Matthew and Luke distinguish from Q1 these verses as Q2, presumably from Peter (who is named at Luke 12:41): Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-38, 41-42; 7:18-23, 9:57-62; 10:2, 12-15, 19-26, 29-32; 11:1-4, 23-26; 12:2-7, 26-31, 39-46; 13:34-35; 16:13. These passages are disproportionately about John the Baptist and apocalypticism. That there is so much about John the Baptist does not fit with Matthew the Apostle, but does fit with Peter as the brother of Andrew, a known disciple of John the Baptist (John 1:40).

 

[Korah]

Now the fifth eyewitness, Matthew. Note how much the separation of Q here in Mark depends upon the preceeding paragraphs in Post #4.
Thus the next eyewitness source I recognize would as likely be as early or earlier. That it is early is also evidenced by it being found in Matthew as well as in Luke. Yes, I am talking about Q (more specifically Q1, not the Q2 listed above). In Mark [and when in Mark is usually called "Twelve Source"] these verses are:
1:9-20,x. 1:29-2:17,lii. 3:13-4:41,lv. 6:2-16,xii. 9:14-29,xxv. 9:33-37,iii. 10:41-45,v. 11:1-11,xv. 11:15-19,vi. 12:11-17,vi. 24-34,vii. 13:18-25,iii. 33-37,ii. {14:10-25,x. 14:43-47, 62-72, 15:3-13, 27-32, 15:42-16:8.}[/font]
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying

[Some Q passages in Mark do show some verbal exactitude to Luke, so 12:1-10 should be regarded as Q2, originally in Greek before being copied along with Ur-Marcus into Luke.]
In addition to which I should have added Matthew 28:16-20 that probably corresponds to the lost ending of Mark. Beyond this, of course, add in [most of] the Double-Tradition verses commonly ascribed to Q. Why would we say these are from an eyewitness? Well, they begin only shortly before we read about the call of Levi at Mark 2:14, so we have internal evidence that all of this may stem from Matthew. External evidence states that the Apostle Matthew wrote the Logia of Jesus, identified by many scholars as Q. This does create an additional problem in extending the Double Tradition to include much Triple Tradition material found in Mark, but we know that much apparently Q material in Thomas is also in Mark. All the Q-Twelve Source material in Mark can be determined by the lack of exact word correspondence between Mark and Luke, as well as by the frequent use of the word “Twelve” to denote the Apostles. (This lack of verbal exactitude means that the Aramaic Q or copies thereof were used at least four different times on the way to the Greek versions in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas, with the copy used for Thomas apparently being the most different from the others.)

There may be reason to differentiate Q from Twelve-Source, in spite of what I have said here. The Q sayings could have been written down at the time Jesus said them, but it is rare that historical narrative is written while it is taking place. Nothing in Mark (or Matthew or Luke) looks like diary entries. Thus we can suppose that the narrative was added later, particularly if we suppose that Q itself (or at least notes for it) was written during Jesus’s lifetime. But the narrative includes the call of Matthew, so it is eyewitness material as well, our fifth eyewitness in the gospels. {Ellipses indicate items that should be deleted.}
Consider also this argument from my first article at the same source for the expansion of Q into Marcan narratives: ( http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common ):One commonly hears that there are no Q passages in the Gospel of Mark. This is incorrect. The discovery of the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in 1946 revealed sayings in it that are in Mark, and not just from Matthew and Luke. Although this could mean that the text of Thomas was based on the completed Synoptic Gospels, close study shows that it is more likely that the parts of Thomas that overlap the canonical Gospels are based on a source text they share in common, namely Q or some variant thereof. Unless the writer of Thomas also had access to Ur-Marcus, this shows that Thomas picked up some of the same parables from Q that Mark included. It thus seems that Ur-Marcus was almost completely narrative text with even fewer sayings than we commonly attribute to Mark.
The Q Source could have been written very early. It was written in Aramaic, judging by the sections that Mark and Luke have in common that lack verbal exactitude. The word “Twelve” (meaning the 12 Apostles) appears so often in this that it is commonly called the Twelve-Source. The name Matthew (or Levi) occurs where this text begins (as at Luke 5:27), and early external tradition names the writer as this Matthew, so this material could have been from an eye-witness or could even have been first put in writing during the lifetime of Jesus. Continuing, but from the third article: ( http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying )
Once the barrier is broken that Q material exists in Mark, the radical change is that even narrative in Mark may be from Q [as listed just above]. The portions of Mark not already listed [farther] above [in Post #4] could be largely from Q. The narrative material in question is called by scholars the Twelve-Source. We cannot tell whether Q and Twelve-Source are distinct.
That Q and Twelve-Source are not distinct is suggested by external criticism. Tradition says that Matthew wrote this gospel [of matthew]. The Higher Critics have suggested that this may have been Q, limited to sayings that occur only in Matthew and Luke. Conservatives have continued to hold that Matthew wrote the gospel with his name. I say split the difference. Acknowledge that Matthew wrote most of the Q discourses, but also allow for the Twelve-Source narrative, which would seem most likely to have come from him. His name (=Levi) occurs first at Mark 2:14, and very little occurs before that.

[Some Q verses should be set aside as not from this first eyewitness. They show close verbal exactitude between Matthew and Luke. A separate later Q2 in Greek can be attributed to Peter as above.
[(March 2012): Consequently, Q1 can be identified as the less verbally exact verses Luke 4:1-12, 6:20-23, 27-35, 39-40, 43-49, 10: 4-11, 16; 11:33-35, 39-44, 46-52; 12:8-12, 22-24, 33-34, 49-59; 13:18-21, 24-30; 14:16-24, 26-27, 34-35; 15:4-10; 16:16-18; 17:3-6, 23-25, 28-37; and 22:28-30.]
[These verses show the perspective of one man who had the same interests in the "Cynic" Jesus as the Jesus Seminar people. The direct speeches of Jesus start after Matthew (Levi) is called at Luke 5:27-28. Papias reported that he was told that the Logia was a gospel written by Matthew. (That it was a complete gospel is argued by James R. Edwards in The Hebrew Gospel & the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (2009), citing J. Kurzinger and C. E. Hill.) If these verses of Q1 were supplemented by Q2 above and also the Twelve-Source, this would have been truly a complete gospel. This may have been known in antiquity as the Gospel of the Hebrews. Or that designation may be more appropriate for Proto-Luke after L was also added to it. Alternately, Edwards prefers to think the Gospel of the Hebrews was just L, and the known quotations from this Hebrews do come disproportionately from L.]
[These verses continue only as far as where the story is picked up in the Passion Narrative. This indicates that the Passion Narrative already existed from the earliest times, and no Q and very little L material was needed to supplement it. Each eyewitness added his own prspective with minimal extraneous additions.]
There may be reason to differentiate Q from Twelve-Source, in spite of what I have said here. The Q sayings could have been written down at the time Jesus said them, but it is rare that historical narrative is written while it is taking place. Nothing in Mark (or Matthew or Luke) looks like diary entries. Thus we can suppose that the narrative was added later, particularly if we suppose that Q itself (or at least notes for it) was written during Jesus’s lifetime. But the narrative includes the call of Matthew, so it is eyewitness material as well, our fifth eyewitness in the gospels.

 

[Korah]

Here is my sixth eyewitness to Jesus who left a written record, a type of Proto-Luke. That Simon wrote it seems to be my original idea, so I'll make this post longer.
Proto-Luke
This fifth eyewitness Q1-Twelve-Source text (presumably from the Apostle Matthew) remained in Aramaic. Next it was merged with the fourth eyewitness Greek text Q2-Proto-Mark (most likely from Peter). This mixed text equates to the Triple Tradition plus Q. The Aramaic was translated before the still-Semitic style of L was added to it. (Meanwhile a different translation of the mixed text led on to Proto-Matthew and eventually to the canonical Matthew and Mark, the latter after abridgment.) The traces of who did this can be discerned by looking for personal clues. We need active characters in Luke who appear nowhere else in the Synoptics. The key name is Simon. The personal experience introduced at this stage starts with a Simon and ends with a Simon. Luke 7:36-50 tells of Jesus going to a dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Luke 24:13-35 is about the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus with two disciples. One is Cleopas. As to the other, "The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon." Traditionally everyone assumes this refers to Simon Peter. However, scripture does not mention any prior appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter. No, the plain meaning is that Jesus had appeared to Cleopas and a different Simon. Just as the Q1-Twelve-Source ended at this point, so did Luke. [Origen also recognized this connection between Cleopas and Simon as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The minority reading "legontes" at 24:34 implies this as well.]

This Simon may be a well-recognized figure in the early Christian Church. The so-called brothers (probably cousins) of Jesus were James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. James was the first leader of the Church. When he was killed (c. 62 A.D.), Simon his brother became Bishop of Jerusalem.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
The eyewitness role of Simon Barsabbas would presumably be limited to passages in Luke between Luke 7:36 and 24:51. He might have been the source of the Infancy Narrative in Luke 1 and 2, but as eyewitness only if he were a step-brother older than Jesus who accompanied his father Joseph to Bethlehem. Nor would he have been the source of any passages already attributable to earlier eyewitnesses John Mark, Peter, and Matthew. He could quite reasonably have been one of the Seventy-Two. (Indeed, that is additional reason to suppose that some non-apostle was the source of the information we find only in Luke 10:1, 17.) He may also be the Simeon called Niger in Acts 13:1.

That I present my original idea that this Simon wrote the L portion of-Luke means that I should show what in Luke may be his eyewitness testimony. He was most likely younger than Jesus, so his eyewitness testimony could not in that case precede Luke 3:7-10, 16-17 about John the Baptist. Next we can establish that this eyewitness wrote verses that we now find only in Luke. The.whole passage in Luke 7:36-50 is so full of detail that it seems like eyewitness testimony. Every verse shows several instances of what looks like eyewitness detail. One stands out, however: verse 39: "When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, he would know who this woman is and what sort of person it is who is touching him and what a bad name she has' ". This could have been told to someone else, but this does give first priority to this Simon as the author, telling us his own thoughts.

In the immediately following verses we encounter the first instance (in any of the gospels) in which we see other people as regular adherents of Jesus: "certain women...Magdalene.... Joanna....Susanna, and many others" (Luke 8:2-3). The next purely Lucan passages skip over to Luke 9:51, where Jesus starts the final journey to Jerusalem. So "he sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem". At this point James and John get rebuked, but anyone present would know who they were, so this is not good evidence that either of them was the author (and certainly not James who died too young).
In contrast we find Luke 9:57-60 listing sayings with such verbal exactitude that we can see it got copied over (from a stage of Q21 that was already in Greek) into Matthew 8:18-22. Luke 10: 13-15 got copied.to Mt. 11:21-24. Similarly Luke 10:21-24 parallels Matthew 11:25-27 and 13:16-17, and Luke 11:9-13 is very much like Mt. 7:7-11. The Sign of Jonah is at both Luke 11:29-32 and Mt. 12:38-42. There is a pattern here: wherever Proto-Luke introduced vibrant, piquant material, it went into Matthew in chronological context. Only the anti-Pharisaic broadsides from Jesus got shunted to their own special section in Matthew 23:23-24:51.

The stray verses about the Seventy-two (Luke 10:1, 17-20) got inserted among old Q1 material in which there are no verbal identities. We can also assign to Simon's L portion of Luke a great part of what follows in the Perean Ministry. Most notably they may include the stories of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Stories that seem most like an eyewitness are found at Luke 10:38-42 (Martha and Mary), 11:1 (preceding the Lord’s Prayer that got copied to Mt. 6:9-13); 11:27-28; 11:37-38, 45, 53-54; 12:13-15; 12:41; 13:1; 13:10-17; 13:22; 13:31; 14:1, 7, 12, 15; 15:1; 17:1-21; 19:1-27 (including the story of Zacchaeus, with intense eyewitness touches); 22:31-38; 23:8-12, 27-32, 39-43, 47-49; and 24:13-53. More broadly, we should attribute to this source also 11:2-13, 29-32, 47-51; 12:35-48; 13:1-17; 13:22-14:14; 14:28-33; 15:8-10; 16:1-12, 19-31; 17:7-21; 18:1-13; and 19:38b-44.
How fitting that a close relative of Jesus, who wrote the main gospel existing in 62 AD, would be selected as the leader of the Church in Jerusalem!

Referring back to the source just previously listed, the Q1-Twelve-Source in Mark drew from a different Aramaic copy, so the Greek translations in Mark never show verbal exactitude with Luke. That contrasts with the Petrine Ur-Marcus sections of Mark that were copied into Luke with such frequent exact word usage.

That traces all the eyewitnesses I can identify in the Synoptics. Each of them contains several other chapters that I cannot show come from eyewitnesses. I’ll turn back to John to identify another eyewitness, though his role there is primarily as an editor. But first there is another editor, who may be the aforementioned first eyewitness, John Mark.

 

[Korah]

Before resuming with my seventh eyewitness, allow me to splice in what should have been the first paragraph in my Post #6 with my sixth eyewitness, Simon:
Even accepting Q-Twelve-Source as eyewitness, could there be yet another eyewitness who wrote Proto-Luke, since it would already have existed before Luke added in Petrine Ur-Marcus to it? No one seems to suspect that. Here is something I wrote in an earlier article:
Proto-Luke [and continuing with this and the rest of Post #6:]

And now my seventh eyewitness, unnamed but most likely John the Apostle, not a new proposal but much more limited in scope (but first a further note about Proto-Luke: )
One further note about Luke. Even where he knew more from what he had heard, he as much as possible restricted himself to eyewitness testimony. If as I say Luke got the Walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) from Simon and it continued through to the end at Luke 24:53, Luke did not add other events between the Resurrection and the Ascension. By "handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses " (Luke 1:2) he means what they had written. Rather than expanding upon that, Luke 24:44-53 looks like a compressed version of what was in his source. His source was equally scrupulous, not listing any appearances of the resurrected Jesus that he had not personally witnessed (Luke 24:13-43, 50-53). The numerous eyewitness details in the Gospel of Luke were already there before Luke translated and edited Proto-Luke.

Scholars who find a larger source in John than just the (usually) seven signs sometimes include the editor who is identified by his frequent use of the term "Pharisee". A good name for these editorial additions is "P-Strand", most often identified as John 1:19-31; 3:1a; 4:1a; 7:25-27, 31-32, 43-49; 8:13a; 9:1, 13-16, 24-28, 40a, 11:46-50, 55-57; 12:12, 17-22, 42-43. To this I would go beyond Urban von Wahlde's advice (to not go beyond John 18:15) and suggest also John 20:1, 3-5, 8, 11b-14a, 22-23, 26-27, based on Teeple's difficulty in assigning these verses simply to the usual source he recognized (S). These latter, however, I have already treated as John Mark's Passion Narrative, so I'm not sure where they should go. This difficulty could be due simply to the same author having written both the Passion Narrative and the P-Strand. But the author of the P-Strand cannot easily be identified. His antipathy to the Pharisees could be explained, however, if he was a Sadducee, as John Mark may have been. If John Mark wrote it, he was not likely an eyewitness for all of it.

The P-Strand seems to be a fairly small element with John, but useful in sectioning off what was earlier in the process from the main editing work that followed it. By this time the eyewitness testimonies were in from John Mark in the Passion Narrative (and possibly the P-Strand as well), Andrew in the Signs Source, and Nicodemus in the Discourses. As told by the Muratorian Canon (c. 170 AD) the various earlier testimonies (Andrew identified by Name) were gathered together and put out in the name of John the Apostle. His primary additions as eyewitness are found primarily in John 13, 20, and 21. His other additions can be identified in detail because his style was anarthrous, never to use the article before a person's name. These smaller segments could be as an eyewitness as well, as any apostle could have been there at those occasions:

John 1:17, 22-23, 40-41, 43a, 44b, 46, 48, 50; (2:23b-25; 4:10, 13-14, 44; 6:2-3, 8b, 15, 24ab, 42, 60, 65, 68a; 10:40- 41; 11:1, 8b-10, 16, 22, 33c -34, 51-53; 12:1b, 4b. 14b-16, 21a, 13:1b-9, 12-17, 21-22, 24, 30-36 ,38; 17:3; 18:1a, 2, 4-8, 10ac, 13a, 14, 25a, 26b, 30; 19:26-27; 20:2, 6a, 10-11a, 14b-15, 18, 24-25; 21:2a, 3-6, 7b, 11, 15b-17a, 17c, 25.
Which of the smaller segments show eyewitness traces? The traditional view is that John the Apostle was present from the first, but I believe that in John 1 we see Andrew (for sure) and Philip as the two disciples of John the Baptist. These small sections look like eyewitness testimony, but Teeple's evidence that the information comes from the Editor may instead mean that the Editor inserted the anarthrous names. In any case, if John was the Editor, he could have obtained sufficient information from Andrew or Philip to give us the details we find there.

Turning in the above list to John 2:23B-25, this commentary would not likely be from an eyewitness. In John 4 the Woman at the Well narrative shows vibrant details from the Editor in the earlier two sections, not just the insertion of names. We can easily believe that the Apostle John could have been present there. As for John 6, the Synoptics tell us that the apostles were present at the Feeding of the Five Thousand, so we can see John providing the numerous details in most of the eight sections. I show the Editor as next involved in John 11, and presumably all the apostles were there at the raising of Lazarus, as this occurred just shortly before Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time. There is detail here, and there is also the clearest evidence that the Editor wrote after the P-Edition, because E's 11:51-53 follows immediately upon the P-Strand John 11:46-50.

Intense eyewitness traces are found in John 13 in all the above cited verses. Teeple found none of his usual S (Source) verses in this chapter at all, making the "Editor" seem like a raw source himself here. In contrast, all the eleven insertions in John 17-19 look like additions. Nevertheless, the thirteen Resurrection, Editor sections in John 20 and 21 look like mostly eyewitness testimony. Teeple attributes only one verse to S.
The upshot is that even the eyewitness seeming less identifiable as an eyewitness nevertheless comes through as such. I have presented seven writers of eyewitness testimony for the gospels, to which numerous women (mostly) could be added as likely eyewitnesses that the major seven may have used, or who could have been the basis for the other material in the four gospels.

 

[Korah]

Now to apply the seven eyewitnesses (and some others) to the Resurrection of Jesus. Also some general observations.
The additional eyewitnesses include several of the witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus. However, among the seven are several as well. I detail the verses attributable to each of them in my article, “Resurrection Sources”:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Resurrection
This article is restricted to probable sources, not authors, so let me enlarge upon that to say, as I have shown earlier here already, that Matthew was the author of the Twelve-Source, John Mark was the author of Petrine Ur-Marcus, and Simon the Son of Clopas was the author of Luke 24 after the 12th verse. Not in the article, but as shown one page above, I list the verses in John 20 and John 21 due to the Apostle John, also an eyewitness. Putting these together almost all of Matthew 28, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24, and John 20 &21 were written by eyewitnesses to the Resurrection.
Even beyond the identifiable eyewitnesses, is there gospel material we can substantiate? Yes. To start with Mark, a two-chapter interlude that is not found in Luke seems to be a round trip back to its start: Mark 6:45-8:27. But at this point in Mark the Twelve Apostles had already been chosen and were presumably well trained to go out in pairs by themselves. We know from Luke 10:1, 17 that seventy two others were later sent, and it was presumably with a pair of these that Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon. If the source of this information was an eyewitness, he would be the eighth. The person supplying this information may also have provided the Matthean chapters that are similar in nature. The author of Q, presumably Matthew, had his own take on Jesus. Likewise the author of Proto-Luke.
Backtracking about the pairs Jesus sent out--in much of Jesus’s ministry he had no more than twelve, so just six pairs. We would not expect to stay on his knees in a synagogue while his disciples were out and about, so we would expect Jesus to be out with one pair or another. The first pair He taught was Andrew and Philip (John 1), the pair with Him in Jerusalem. Yet even they seemed unaware of His most radical teachings that are found in John 7 to 10. The Synoptic gospels tell us that Jesus was reticent about proclaiming His messiahship, so it figures that He kept away from his apostles when revealing this. Out in the countryside Jesus did not include “I” statements about Himself, and evaded demands that He clarify His role. In Jerusalem there were so many learned persons that Jesus gave frank answers to questions from them.
We should not expect the gospels to be uniform in their presentation of Jesus. A core of eyewitnesses were apostles, but Matthew in his Q was quite different in his interest in ethical sayings as against the narratives around miracles preferred by Peter and Andrew. The Apostle John focused on sacraments and theology. John Mark told just what he knew personally. Simon, apparently one of the seventy-two, told only about the later part of Jesus’s ministry.. Only Nicodemus with the Discourses was radically different from everyone else.
The case needs to be made that each eyewitness record adds to the probability that the gospels have at least one eyewitness. Let’s assume a minimal probability component that a particular eyewitness is 10% certain to be such. That leaves a 90% probability that he does not serve to prove to be an eyewitness. But each additional eyewitness proposed drops that negative result by a factor of .9, leaving 81% after considering two. After considering four, the negative probability drops to 65%, then down to 52% after six are multiplied together. The negative drops to just over 40% after the seven. True, all these probabilities are not independent, but the probability of each is probably a lot larger than 10%. All in all the probability that there was not at least one eyewitness probably drops to 10-20%.

 

[Korah]

I've done much further writing about Gospel Eyewitnesses, but below I'm posting what seems most suitable for Christian Forums:
Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear. (This seems closely related to the principle of inclusio enunciated by Richard Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006).) To give it a name of its own for my purposes here, call it the Alpha and Omega principle.
Result: Seven true positives, and two false positives (Mary and Philip)
There would be no magic in the number seven as those who left written eyewitness records about Jesus, would there? Even assuming that seven is the perfect number of completeness, there would be no evidence for it, would there? Maybe there is.
Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two "book-end" the text in question. :
The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be "the disciple known to the High Priest









" (John 18:15-16). 16-1As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14,7.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega.
For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two "book-end" the text in question. For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesus's body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.
As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.
During Jesus's life-time the Apostle Matthew may have written Q and later the associated Twelve-Source that underlies gMark as well. If so his name turns up almost at the start of his eyewitness portion of gMark, his call by Jesus at Mark 2:14. His name only occurs again in the naming of the Twelve, but this gospel concludes abruptly at 16:8 in a section most likely from the Twelve Source that can be shown to continue into much of the ending of gMatthew, or at least Matthew 28:16 with the word "eleven" denoting Matthew among them. The Twelve-Source may underlie part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the name "Matthew" is included there along with the other ten remaining apostles (Acts 1:13).
Last to write, but still active on my interpretation (and thereby) becoming Bishop of Jerusalem in 62 CE, is the eyewitness I discovered, Simon. He is one of the two disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) according to Origen and my reading of Luke 24:34. The name Simon also comes at the start of the Lucan material as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). If he is not to be identified with this Simon, he still may be (as a family member) the source for the Infancy Narrative starting up Luke 1 and 2. I see him as the author of Proto-Luke.

Writing later than most of the others, but still an eyewitness, was the Apostle John as the main Editor of the Gospel of John. His name is in the title. For “John” in the text itself, John the Baptist comes up early, but always as simply “John”. This could indicate an author not needing to give further identification about a John who was not himself. In any case, the editorial insertions I recognize (following Howard M. Teeple) begin in John 1 and continue through John 21. If we assume he was also the Beloved Disciple, then he is written about in the very ending; John 21:20-23.

But could this process be carried on and on? Might there be other names we could associate with an occurrence at the beginning and end of relevant sections? There are not actually very many other names to consider. James is one. The last instance is Mark 10:35, with still six more chapters of Mark to go. The first occurrence does fit, in Mark 1:19. I'm setting it aside as not close enough a parallel.
Finally, I encounter two that don't fit. There is inclusio, but they are not eyewitnesses. The name "Mary" does appear at first and last. She's in the start of both gMatthew and gLuke. She is present at the Cross (John 19:25) and in Acts1:14. She is named at Luke 1:27, and concluding this section we read at Luke 2:52, "His mother stored up all these things in her heart." Shouldn't we have an eyewitness text from her also? I guess Luke 1 and 2 would fit? Eight eyewitnesses? And yes, it fits. Practically everything could have been known to Mary except Luke 1:1-4. Personally, I had never given much thought to Mary as having written an eyewitness record; just that Luke had gotten good information from her. This story goes back three decades before the rest of the gospel narratives, leaving more time for legendary accruals, however. The scholarly literature on these two chapters is heavily weighted to the Roman Catholic side, as elegantly reviewed by Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah (1999). He has lots of doubts about historicity of Luke 1 and 2. As for any eyewitness claims, he dismisses this on page 575,"that the Lucan infancy narration came from Mary has been deemed untenable from the start (1B)".
http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Messiah-Commentary-Narratives-Reference/dp/0300140088#reader_0300140088
(The above link to Amazon gives the largest preview I have ever seen. Of course the book is 750 pages. Highly recommended.)
Another name that gives a false positive is Philip. His name appears basically wherever the name Andrew appears. Did both of them write eyewitness accounts spanning the same sections of narrative? The best that can be made of this is a reinforcement of the Muratorian Canon that a team of apostles wrote gJohn, and that Andrew is a better choice as the writer because the name "Philip" appears over a chapter beyond the relevant section (in the Farewell discourse, John 14:8, 9).
Close, we might say, with seven true positives, two false positives (Mary and Philip. For ordinary purposes that might serve, but here I'm seeking confirmation from God that He ordained these seven eyewitnesses and no others. Since I'm using names in the first place as my primary identifiers of eyewitnesses, it's not saying much that the same name appears more than once, and that the primary occurrence is at the start of the section.
So my hypothesis is not confirmed in exactly the way I wanted it. My seven eyewitnesses are confirmed, but something equally meaningful may apply to the other two. The name
"Philip" in paralleling "Andrew" may indicate he also had a part in writing gJohn, maybe in tying the Signs Source together with the rest of gJohn by his name getting into the Farewell Discourse at John 14:8, 9. As for Mary (aside from the old standard that women don’t count), there could be good reason(s) to emphasize her under the Alpha and Omega principle.

 

[Korah]

'The weakest part of my thesis remains naming Simon as the author of Luke or Proto-Luke, so I am supplementing it below. Kyle R. Hughes argues that the L writer in Luke also was the source for the Pericope of the Adulteress in John 7:53-8:11: (The Lukan Special Material and the Tradition History of the Pericope Adulterae, Novum Testamentum July 2013, 232-251.) http://taarcheia.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/the-lukan-special-material-and-the-tradition-history-of-the-pericope-adulterae.pdfNot quite Fundamentalist, to be sure, but this is firm support for historicity of this and other gospel events. On the other hand, scholars are giving qualified support to a radical methodology by Dennis R. MacDonald in Two Shipwrecked Gospels that reverses the usual order of the gospels by placing Luke later than some bits of apocryphal gospels and commentaries. Thus my thesis here of seven written gospel eyewitness may be a good refutation of attempts to use non-extant and/or fragmentary late texts to undermine extant gospel texts.
Christianity in Jerusalem had become dominated by the family of Jesus, and I hold that one of them, Simon, combined Q with his own L contribution to form Proto-Luke. That this Simon was the companion of Cleopas on the Road to Emmaus was known to Origen in Contra Cesium ii. 62, 68 and is found in a marginal note in Codex Sinaiticus, or at least as some son of Cleopas according to a fragment of Julius Africanus in Philip of Side. That forms an inclusio with this Simon at Luke 24:34 that began in Luke 7:36-50. So I'm the only one speculating that this Simon also wrote the L material between those markers while he was incorporating Q into Proto-Luke? Well, it's not just speculation based on internal evidence, unless such speculation occurred a millennium ago.
Contra Celsum II, 62: And in the Gospel of Luke also, while Simon and Cleopas were conversing with each other respecting all that had happened to them, Jesus drew near, and went with them."
Contra Celsum II, 68: For it is related in St. Luke's Gospel, that Jesus after His resurrection took bread, and blessed it, and breaking it, distributed it to Simon and Cleopas; and when they had received the bread, "their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight,"
I have presented strong arguments for some of my eyewitness writers (such as for the Discourses and the Passion Narrative), but one of the weakest of my seven is that Simon wrote Proto-Luke. It turns out there is much scholarly support (at least indirect) for this. Jay Harrington has such a large preview from his thousand pages studying the Lukan Passion Narrative The Lukan Passion Narrative: The Markan Material in Luke 22,54-23,25 : a ... - Jay M. Harrington - Google Books
that the initial survey is almost all included. From B. S. Easton on page 47, “L was composed by a strict Jewish-Christian and written for the benefit of other Jewish-Christians and in order to convert Jews to Jewish Christianity.” (Linguistic Evidence for the Lucan Source L, JBL 29 (1910), p. 139-40) Even more to my position was “G. L. Hahn, that the author of Luke was Silas in the Emmaus story” (p. 64). (That must mean “Simon”, not “Silas”.) Though I’m open now to the entirety of Luke being by Simon (not 1:1-4), that he wrote Proto-Luke is enough. Even M.-J. Lagrange agreed that Luke reflected a heavy Semitic style and that it is “impossible to distinguish between Luke and the supposed LQ source” (64-69).
These quotes from a hundred years ago would not mean much except that voices are rising again for Luke himself as Jewish , not a gentile. The platitudes of conventional scholarship take for granted that the man Luke was a gentile and that the style of his gospel is very good Greek, but these assumptions will not withstand scrutiny. If the final redactor was Greek (as for Luke 1:1-4), that does not necessarily hold for any of the main writers of Luke or the first 15 chapters of Acts.
As Dirk Jongkind at Eyewitnesses, Luke, Mark, Bauckham | Evangelical Textual Criticism evangelicaltextualcriticism wrote:

I have spent some days with Richard Bauckham's recent Jesus and Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2006). There is an interesting problem on page 43:
"Origen (C. Cels. 2.262) gave the name Simon to the anonymous companion of Cleopas in Luke 24:13, the first of many attempts to identify this disciple. [FN(18): If Origen intended, as he probably did, an otherwise known Simon, this would not really be an example of the tendency [of naming the previously unnamed, DJ] we are discussing. He may have identified Cleopas correctly with Jesus' uncle Clopas and Cleopas's companion with Clopas's son Simeon/Simon, known from Hegesippus as the second bishop of Jerusalem.
There is a little bit more to say about this issue as there is some textual variation involved. In Luke 24:34 Bezae reads
λεγοντες instead of λεγοντας, turning the two men who had just returned from Emmaus into the ones saying 'the Lord
... has appeared to Simon.' The idea here is that it is not the Eleven saying to the Two that Jesus appeared to Simon, but the Two to the Eleven, indirectly identifying the companion of Cleopas.

So Simon as with Cleopas on the way to Emmaus is a modern scholarly position now of note. This can be extended in several directions. A commentator on 24:10 stated:

It seems as if the testimony of one of the disciples who went to Emmaus had been the ground of the whole former part, perhaps of the whole, of this chapter. We find consequently this account exactly agreeing with his report afterwards, Luke 24:23-24.
Luke 24:1 - Greek Testament Critical Exegetical Commentary - Commentaries - StudyLight.org
(Alford, Greek Exegetical Commentary) He saw the first verses in Luke 24 as coming from the same person writing about 24:13-34, indeed the whole chapter. Raising Simon to source of Luke 24 might just as well promote him for Proto-Luke as well, perhaps the entire Luke.
But even suggesting Simon as one of the two on the way to Emmaus raises the objection from some that verse 34 cannot refer to an otherwise unknown Simon, so it must be Simon Peter, one of the apostles in Jerusalem who told this to the two, in spite of the awkwardness of the Greek that with the comfortable Bezan reading would have the Simon to be one of the two arriving with their news. However, the objection utterly fails. If the Simon was the writer, he was certainly known to himself, and his text probably read "to me" or (with Loisy) "to us";. By the time the text would read "Simon", this Simon would be the heir-apparent or presiding Bishop of Jerusalem, perhaps more known to the readers there than Peter. This man was either the brother of Jesus or cousin through his father Cleopas.
This of course raises the problem of why the very prominent Bishop Simeon is not remembered as the author of what he wrote, but by a century after his time the Jerusalem Church had fallen from prominence and was even in disfavor as unorthodox about the dating for Easter.
Another implication that Simon was the author comes from the church father Theophylact who stated that the man Luke was the second man going to Emmaus. He accepted that much of Luke 24 seemed first-hand so the common belief in Luke as the author led him to view him as personally involved in Luke 24:13-34. Many modern commentators accepted Luke's involvement here, apparently impressed with how much this looked like eyewitness testimony. Protestants routinely accepted that Luke was the author, so the implication seemed clear to them that he was the other man on the way to Emmaus. This was standard in the 18th and 19th centuries from commentators such as Adam Clarke and Gill.
They believed this without any biblical or early church father support. How much more now should their logic about an eyewitness writer apply to my thesis that Simon was the prime author of Luke 24, that it is largely from his Proto-Luke. That Luke was with Cleophas has long been regarded as untenable for lack of any evidence that Luke was involved that early. Yet that opinion provides support for Simon as the prime writer here, for that fits his time and place.
As for why this gospel is attributed to Luke, not to Simon, as stated above the Jerusalem church was regarded with suspicion as heretical by the time Irenaeus specifically named Luke as author about 185 CE.

 

[Korah]

"Gospel" from Jesus?
Recent research by Steve Mason has shown that the word "gospel" may never have been spoken by Jesus, just attributed to Him particularly in the Gospel of Mark. Excluding use of the verb form "to evangelize", the noun in Greek with the definite article (our "the gospel" from "to euangelion" is used primarily by Paul. In contrast the gospels of Luke and John never use the word as a noun, nor do the first 14 chapters of Acts. Consensus dating put these gospels after Mark, but my own research had come to the conclusion that Luke was first (and probably paralleling John in a different line). Since Paul wrote primarily in the '50's, it would seem that texts excluding "gospel" are earlier than the gospels that picked up Pauline terminology. It would seem that sources underlying our extant gospels did not use the noun "the gospel", but that Mark with its seven occurrences edited it in in place of "the cross" or similar term. Similarly Matthew includes "the gospel" four times by using a text (later than Luke's source) that it shared with Mark. Similarly the source underlying Acts of the Apostles for the first 12 chapters never says "the gospel", it only occurring in later chapters where the writer necessarily was influence by the Paul he wrote about (Acts 15:27, 20:24).

Perhaps Steve Mason (and almost everybody else) is wrong about his assumptions!

That in itself is perhaps not surprising, but now we come to the data that really upset the applecart. Within the NT collection, distribution of to euangelion is in no way proportionate. The genuine and disputed letters of Paul, although they occupy somewhat less than a quarter of the NT (about 32,445 of 138,000 words), account for 60 of the 76 occurrences of the neuter singular. Now, Paul's letters are the earliest Christian writings to have survived, belonging to the first generation after Christ (roughly 30 to 65 CE). The Gospels belong to the next generation, from 35 to 100. Of the non-Pauline material in the NT, Mark is the heaviest user with 8 occurrences (including the long ending), all of these with the article. Thus, Paul (including pseudo-Paul) and Mark together account for fully 67 of 72 occurrences of to euangelion. By contrast Matthew, though most scholars think that its author used Mark as a source, taking over more than 90% of the earlier text and adding about 50%, has only 4 occurrences of this noun. Most surprisingly, although it also used Mark as a source, Luke omits the noun altogether and Acts has it only twice, though this "double work" accounts for nearly half (25) of the NT's 54 occurrences of the cognate verb euangeliz. John has no trace of the word group in any form, and the hypothetical sayings Gospel Q along with the structurally similar Thomas lack the noun. Hebrews also omits the noun, though it has the verb twice.

The Bible and Interpretation

Mason's insights also tie in with my Thesis, my radical rethinking that there are seven written eyewitnesses accounts as sources within the four gospels. (Mason himself, however, attributes the absence of "the gospel" in Luke to Luke's unwillingness to use Pauline terminology.) Since Paul wrote largely in the '50's, and the seven sources I have identified do not use the term "the gospel", this argues for a still earlier date for the sources. Four of the eyewitnesses I find in John, which never uses the term. Another (Simon) I find only in Luke. The other two, Peter and Matthew, are found in the Triple Tradition,but "the gospel" does not appear in the earliest Synoptic, Luke. Paul's terminology "the gospel" had only spread to the gospels during the editing towards Mark and Matthew. So though these two eyewitnesses do have the term "the gospel" in some editions, it would seem the earlier sources did not have them and do go back as I say to 44 A. D. when John Mark and Peter got together and wrote Proto-Mark.

That further supports "the gospel" being a late term as far as the gospels go.. Luke, if late, nevertheless had an earlier version of Mark without "the gospel". Canonical Mark is late, as is the closely related Matthew (that contains the extra four chapters of Mark that are not in Luke). As Matthew is less Pauline in theology than is Mark, it contains just four instances of "the gospel". Both Matthew and Mark would seem to draw on a shared Pauline Proto-Matthew, thus both from the '50's or later. Even if Mark is so Pauline, that is evidence it is later than Luke, or its sources are later.

That date is more integral than Pauline typology is shown by the Acts of the Apostles. Its sources never contains "the gospel", but where the writer (presumably Luke) does not have the source available, he uses "the gospel" at 15:7 and 20:24. So Luke does not on principle eliminate "the gospel", at least where Paul himself is involved. I think I can reasonably stand on my contention that Mason's discovery supports both my hypotheses, the seven written gospel accounts and the Evolving Proto-Gospel in which Luke got written before the other two Synoptics.

(For the other hypothesis of the Evolving Proto-Gospel of Luke written first see
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=222&start=60
especially the Oct. 15 & 17, 2014 posts in my thread "Horizontal Synoptic Solution")

 

[RevelationTestament]

I'm posting this thread in Unorthodox Theology only because it employs Higher Criticism that many Christians reject. However, I come to the very orthodox conclusion that the gospels were mostly written by eyewitnesses. I'll present my first (of eight) in this post, leave time for any discussion, then proceed to the others one post at a time.
The standard Christian apologia for the gospels states that they were written by eyewitnesses or (in the cases of Mark and Luke) were written to give someone else’s eyewitness testimony. This works well for Mark, which is usually understood as Peter’s personal testimony, but the others are typically regarded as composite works. For the Gospel of John, the more it is presented as a unitary work by Christians, the less critics regard it as an eyewitness record. When examined more carefully, however, most of the gospel material can be established as from eyewitnesses.
The starting point for a new look might be Richard Bauckham in his 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and his 2007 The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple. He rejects the Form Criticism of early 20th Century and endeavors to show that all the gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. He’s not saying that any gospel is itself the work of an eyewitness, but that eyewitnesses stand behind each gospel. The most obvious example is Peter as the basis for Mark. The Gospel of John is more complicated. By dropping John as the author and eyewitness behind that gospel, he goes on to show that there are several eyewitnesses consulted by the man who did write John. The same would be more obviously true of the Gospel of Luke. He says he consulted eyewitnesses or eyewitness testimony. As for John, Bauckham explains the gradual emergence of the Beloved Disciple as the author’s way of introducing himself, a non-apostle, who only from John 13 presents himself as the eyewitness who needs no other validation. The Beloved Disciple is the author of John, but we don’t necessarily know who he is.
Bauckham seemed to stop in no-man’s-land. For Evangelicals, and even more for conservative Roman Catholics, establishing any eyewitness(es) behind John is not good enough if it is not John the Apostle. That he did not name the eyewitness(es) for sure is not satisfying to Christians not even so conservative. Trying to establish eyewitnesses and even suggesting their names is anathema to scholars of a more liberal bent. If my opinion matters, it’s not enough to go against the grain of scholarship and suggest eyewitnesses, but without closing the deal and presenting evidence for specific eyewitnesses and which parts each wrote. But to do that Bauckham would have had to cross his Evangelical base by acknowledging sources within the gospels, and he was not prepared to do that.
For most of two centuries now, scholarship has shown more and more willingness to break up the gospels into constituent parts. For some scholars this was a way to salvage evidentiary and historical grounds for knowing Jesus. This was particularly true of the concept of Marcan Priority or in establishing a large Ur-Marcus source within it. Likewise many scholars in “demarcating” a Q Source (redundant, yes?) in Matthew and Luke suggested that the Logia said to be from Matthew should be understood to be Q. The Two-Source Theory provides for this. However, less and less attention is being paid to eyewitnesses standing behind even these. There is also the Four-Source Theory, but no one seems to have suggested one basic eyewitness to be behind L for Luke or M for Matthew. However, there is a good case (which I will show) for identifying a Simon as the L Source, a man who was a disciple of John the Baptist and one of Jesus’s Seventy-Two.
As for the Gospel of John, critics have readily singled out the Signs, the Passion Narrative, and (by some) the Discourses as due to sources. I will show that each of these has an eyewitness author and the main Editor was himself an eyewitness. My case is that the upshot of two centuries of Higher Criticism properly is to identify seven eyewitnesses to the four gospels.
Tracing sources of the gospels would seem to start with the earliest written documents, but the logic starts better with the foundation upon which the other sources and additions were built. This source is the Passion Narrative, the largest part of the material common to both John and the Synoptics. The source for the information in it is most likely John Mark, who was the most likely “disciple known to the high priest”. (See John 18:15-16, 20:2-9, in which in John 20:2 the English word “love” is phileo in the Greek, not “agape” as in John 13. In John 18-19 we get events and direct quotes that Peter would not have witnessed.)
John 18 launches right out with Jesus going to the Garden. Whereas Teeple believed the information here came from the Synoptics and was later enlarged upon, he more correctly called it a source. No one regards these chapters as from the Signs Source. This foundation source from John Mark is the following:
[My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.]
John 18:1b, 1d,ii. 3,vi. 10b,v. 12,iv. 13b,i. 15-19,xiii. 22,ii 25b,ii. 27-31,vii. 33-35,vii. (36-40);x. 19:1-19,xl. 21-23,viii. 28-30,vii. 38b,iii. 40-42;vi. 20:1,iv. 3-5,viii. 8,ii. 11b-14a,iv. 19b,ii. 22-23,v. 26-27,viii. 30,ii. John Mark gives the story of this one week in his life, best called the Passion Diary.
Some of the later passages in John 20 are as likely to have been added as P-Strand, but as discussed later this may have come from the same author.
A great many scholars have believed that a Passion Narrative was the first element of the gospels to be written. It seems similarly often believed that John Mark was very young at this time and lived near Jerusalem, so his personal testimony would not tend to include narrative preceding John 18. He is the first of seven identifiable eyewitnesses in the gospels.

OK wow. This is a lot of material to go over. It's been awhile since I've taken my course in NT textual criticism, but I am currently interested in determining to the extent possible what language each of the 4 gospels was written in. To a certain extent I am also interested in textual evidence of authorship. Are you familiar with Greenleaf's classic "The Testimony of the Evangelists"? He has a fairly keen eye for various points in the gospel from an evidentiary standpoint. Do you have any comment on that?
You seem convinced that certain of the gospels have an aramaic base. I have come to this conclusion from comparing the Peshitta to the Greek manuscripts and from the simple early accounts of other early church writers.
I now conclude that Matthew was probably the first gospel and was indeed written by Matthew. I believe the early accounts that there was a "Hebrew" Matthew or probably better called a Syro-Aramaic Matthew. He was a logical choice by Jesus because as a tax collector he was undoubtedly shrewd as to the thought processes of the Jews, while undoubtedly also knowing Greek since he had to work with government officials. But I do not believe He wrote a Greek Matthew although he probably could have. It was probably translated later by Luke or perhaps someone acting as a church translator.
Mark is probably a joint effort between a more literate Mark and Peter as tradition has it. I don't have a lot of feel for its original language as of yet. Nonetheless it is obviously not a rote copy of Matthew.
Luke I feel represents a composite effort. You mention your opinion that he said he based his gospel on eye witnesses. Are you referring to the comment in chapter 1 that he had a perfect knowledge of all things from the start? He is known as a companion of Paul, but probably also evangelized with others so would be familiar with each of their accounts. He is especially more detailed in the accounts of Jesus' miracles or healings, and so probably was a doctor as history alleges. He also seems to be writing the gospel for the benefit of a Greek reader, Theophilus, so probably wrote this gospel in Greek. The fact that he felt compelled to write it also suggests to me that Matthew was not written in Greek. Other factors point to this as well such as the reverse genealogy of Christ back to Adam as in the Greek custom. He apparently gained as much detail as he could from as many apostles as was practical. I also see his authorship in Acts. So it does seem there were probably several eye witness accounts that Luke drew from in writing this gospel. But tbh I have lost a feel for specifics about Q and the other source theories since I studied them many yrs ago. For these reasons I also feel the original Acts was written in Greek, and that the Peshitta contains a later translation from the Greek.
I love John. I believe John gives Jesus' most spiritual teachings. I am somewhat surprised that you seem to feel it is based on multiple witnesses, and am interested to hear what you say about this.
It is undoubtedly the most unique of the gospels, and I do believe John was responsible for its authorship although he may have used some source documents. Nor am I positive about its original language and will study what you have to say about this. My feel is from a practical standpoint he probably wrote it in Greek. This seems corroborated by the fact that the Revelation of John did not appear in the earliest Syriac Bible or Peshitta, so it too was probably written in Greek obviously at a later time than the gospel began to spread east from Antioch.
I am also interested to hear any comments you may have about the preservation of the tetragrammaton in the NT. It seems an effort was made to preserve it in the Syriac, but I believe by the time of the Peshitta manuscripts we now have, this is not an exclusive practice.
Thanks for your posts

 

[Vanguard PCD]

Most theologians would disagree with you. The gospels were written decades after Jesus' death. Those PhD's that examined the gospels using textual criticism determined long ago that eyewitnesses did not write them.

 

[RevelationTestament]

Most theologians would disagree with you. The gospels were written decades after Jesus' death. Those PhD's that examined the gospels using textual criticism determined long ago that eyewitnesses did not write them.

This is largely because they dismiss prophecy. They do not believe Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple. So they reason that the gospels must have been written after the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. I know, I read their reasoning. But their Ph.D.s are only as good as the paper they got embossed on. The destruction of the city was actually prophesied in Daniel 9 right down to the 7 yr war. Jesus is the messiah of Daniel 9 and obviously knew the city was going to be destroyed exactly as prophesied.

 

[Meta Tron]

As much as my analytical side would love to accept the later dating as per the wide swath of academia that does, I simply cannot get past the glaring absence of any mention of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD in any of the gospels. This is a particularly disturbing absence for the later dating due to that destruction not being duly recognized as fulfillment of Christs prophecy in Luke 21:6, Mathew 24:2 or Mark 13:2. All of which refer to the destruction of the Temple in a clearly future frame of reference.

Luke 21:6

As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

Matt 24:2

And He said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down."

Mark 13:2

And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down."

 

[Korah]

I am currently interested in determining to the extent possible what language each of the 4 gospels was written in. To a certain extent I am also interested in textual evidence of authorship. Are you familiar with Greenleaf's classic "The Testimony of the Evangelists"? He has a fairly keen eye for various points in the gospel from an evidentiary standpoint. Do you have any comment on that?
You seem convinced that certain of the gospels have an aramaic base.

I show in my subsequent posts (after the #1 you quote) that the sources of the gospels were some in Aramaic and some in Greek. They were even combined for a time in both languages, making it possible to sort out the sources by whether the differences are large or small. Matthew and Mark were written from a Proto-Matthew that had already been translated fully into Greek. Luke in contrast has such Semitic characteristics to its special L material that the latter was still in Aramaic when it was added to create Luke, probably before the other two Synoptics.

 

[Korah]

Most theologians would disagree with you. The gospels were written decades after Jesus' death. Those PhD's that examined the gospels using textual criticism determined long ago that eyewitnesses did not write them.

Not EXACTLY correct. In fact, not true at all. OK, actually, pure bunkum!
Schmidt, Dibelius, and Bultmann about 1920 invented Form Criticism on the ASSUMPTION that there were no eyewitnesses. (Vincent Taylor was soon to lampoon this assumption, something like "Thus it would seem that all the apostles and disciples exited Planet Earth right along with Jesus at the Ascension!" Namely: "If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been
translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection." http://www.tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/library/TynBull_2001_52_2_07_Head_GospelEyewitnesses.pdf )
Long about 1956 Canon Dennis Nineham supposedly set about to prove Meyer right, though his quite short articles actually were much more limited to advise caution about claiming eyewitness testimony.
(By the way, Form Criticism as a serious scholarly enterprise expired about 1980. By then everyone realized that no one could learn anything by it.)
What else ya got?
EDITED TO ADD:
I'm such a hypocrite! Ir was Bultmann who "discovered" the "Signs Gospel" within the Gospel of John, generally now accepted.

 

[Korah]

Anyone know why my post #6 through #11 are marred by the substitution of number like &#8220 8216 etc scattered throughout the text? Or how to fix the problem.
Fixed it myself, substituting " and ' for most of the strange numbers.

 

[Korah]

Bump

 

[Korah]

The standard Christian apologia for the gospels states that they were written by eyewitnesses or (in the cases of Mark and Luke) were written to give someone else’s eyewitness testimony. This works well for Mark, which is usually understood as Peter’s personal testimony, but the others are typically regarded as composite works. For the Gospel of John, the more it is presented as a unitary work by Christians, the less critics regard it as an eyewitness record. When examined more carefully, however, most of the gospel material can be established as from eyewitnesses.
THE ABOVE IS MY FIRST REAL PARAGRAPH FROM MY POST #1. IS NO ONE AT ALL INTERESTED TO READ MY THESIS THAT WE CAN IDENTIFY SEVEN EYEWITNESSES IN THE FIRST FOUR GOSPELS? IT IS ALL IN MY FIRST EIGHT POSTS IN THIS THREAD.